Road Side Madness!

                                                      ROAD SIDE MADNESS                                                                    

One of my favorite parts of India is the Insane roads here that are always filled with excitement, and adventure! After three months i can finally form a brief summary of the set up of this traffic system to make it a bit more understandable for foreigners. so here goes......

                                                                   ROADS OBSERVATIONS

1)                   Rules on streets are NOT followed.

2)                   It is common that, if one side of the road is crowded, to drive in to oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road.

3)                   If you pay for a fancy license plate you will not be ticketed.

4)                    It is common but not encouraged to see people hanging off of packed busses or sitting on top of potatoes sacks in the backs of trucks.

5)                   The legal age to drive is 18 but you may see some 12 year olds driving.

6)                    It is common to see full families, of four squeezed onto one bike.

7)                   It is very uncommon for anyone to where seat belts!

8)                   Roads are like one insane game of RUSH, its like if every single tiny gap on the road is not filled with a car people feel they will get nowhere!

9)                   Horns are not used in as an emergency when a crisis is about to happen its more like if you here a honk it means “Move OVER or I will Hit you any way and MAKE and emergency” but basically its just a constant horn going off everywhere….one hand on the wheel one hand holding down the horn!

10)                Before crossing a street by foot one must seriously consider how much they value their LIFE! It is like a war zone out there! At first I couldn’t cross with out having a nervous break down and hold someone’s hand but now I have it down. The problem with crossing the street is the pedestrians frame of mind is “walk across at your own pace…..the cars will move for you!” but the drivers frame of mind is “drive at your own pace the people will run from you”. This causes a little bit of a hectic situation

11)                Not only when on the street does someone have to look out for cars but, there are also Cows, carts, bikes, busses, street dogs, huge pot holes, and other random unexpected sights coming from EVERY directing. So don’t just look left when crossing a street….look up down, left right and be sure to double and triple check.

FYI: This Traffic is more to the extreme side so please do not think that every road in India is like this....but you do see this VERY often here in chennai!

P.S sorry for my lack of blog post! I will start posting more often because there is SO much i need to talk about!